Barbara Hall loves vintage postcards. She collected them for years, and accumulated more than 100,000 of them.

When she decided to unload most of them in 1985, the payoff made the parting easier. Hall sold the lot to a dealer for $35,000.

"My husband (at the time) drove to Syracuse, and the dealer paid him in cash," she said. "He drove back from Syracuse with all this money. He spread it all out and said, 'Forget your postcards, look at that.' That really made my day."

Her then-husband, Bruce Hyatt, sold his stamp collection around the same time. They used the money to buy a house in Victor in 1986 and have been there since.

Hall kept 300 of her favorite postcards but now wants to sell them. Most of the cards are more than 100 years old and depict scenes, people and events from Rochester. Anyone who's interested in buying the entire set can contact Hall at bjhall40@ rochester.rr.com.

"I just kept the Rochester ones for sentimental reasons," said Hall, 72, an Irondequoit native who has lived in this area her entire life. "It was just my love for Rochester. They bring back lots of memories."

So, what's depicted in the Rochester postcards? Ontario Beach Park, parades, Seneca Park Zoo, the Charlotte harbor, downtown hotels, canal boats passing through the Aqueduct, and White City and Point Pleasant in Irondequoit, to name a few. She has an aluminum postcard of Sibley's. Her favorites have images of Rattlesnake Pete, a Rochester legend who ran a saloon and museum in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Hall started collecting postcards in the 1970s. She bought some holiday-themed cards at a Webster antique shop for 10 cents each. Her hobby took off like wildfire.

"I had a library of books of all these cards and what they were worth," she said. "I always went for quality. Through the knowledge I got from the books and going to postcard shows, I became a dealer myself."

The vast majority of those cards — those that she sold — "had nothing to do with Rochester. My big collection had to do with everything else. Some were artist-signed. A lot of them were circulated through the mail."

Those cards depicted scenes including expositions, holidays and patriotic themes or people like Washington and Lincoln. Some were vintage advertisements. Most all went for a good buck.

"A lot of those cards, like Santa Claus cards, you could pay $35 per card," she said. "They're highly embossed and very colorful. They're not made anymore. It's demand and what's available."

The most Hall paid for any postcard was $100, for one designed by Alphonse Mucha, a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist. She also owned some desired German "Gruss Aus" postcards.

Hall hasn't added to her collection for years and never kept any "new" cards. "They're cheap," she said. "These are really classy."

Postcard collecting has been popular for at least a century. Clubs all over the world are devoted to the hobby, and numerous websites are devoted to the topic. One website, www.thepostcard web.com, states that the hobby grew into a craze in the first decade of the 20th century, when postcards were "produced and sold in record amounts." Another website, www.postcardy.com states that 968 million postcards were mailed in the U.S. in 1913. "In addition, many unused cards went directly into collections," the website notes.

That's the era most collectors covet because of the detailed artwork. Hall noticed them while antique shopping with Hyatt, who was always on the lookout for additions to his stamp collection.

Hall and Hyatt divorced in 2001, but have remained good friends. Hyatt, 79, recalled when they decided to sell their collections.

"The thrill was in the getting, not the having," he said. "We decided it was time to sell."

Hyatt got about $40,000 for his stamp collection. He remembered driving back from Syracuse with the cash from selling Hall's postcards.

"When I'm driving home, I was thinking if I get in an accident, the police are going to think that I'm a drug dealer or something," he said with a laugh.

Hall had just started collecting postcards when she heard, while at work, about a vast collection that was for sale. She scooped up about 70,000 postcards, sight unseen, all at once, Hyatt said.

Hall worked at Xerox from 1961 — just before the company changed its name from Haloid Xerox to simply Xerox — until retiring in 1996. She served as an administrative assistant to four different vice presidents over the last 20 years of her career.

Hall's second husband, Bob Hall, died in July. They had been married 11 ½ years. His death got her thinking about the future of her postcard collection: She had no children of her own, and his three children aren't interested, she said.

"What's going to happen to them?" Hall said. "I'd like to let somebody who would enjoy them have them, but I would like to sell them."